1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the transportation of data from one or more remote wireless terminals to one or more central hosts. It uses a system comprised of a managed, virtually constructed, wireless network and a communication protocol including a system of routing across unlike networks. The communication protocol is independent of the underlying physical network.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In the United States and Internationally, electronic commerce markets today are experiencing a fundamental shift from wired to wireless communications. This shift is being driven by the compelling economic advantage of wireless communication. Revenues can be increased through greater functionality and flexibility in remote terminal locations. The primary example used in this document is of financial institutions offering banking services to their customers by opening bank branches and deploying ATMs (Automated Teller Machines) at locations that allow them to reach their customers at sites remote from the main facility. Other industries also depend on secure, reliable data collection from remote locations including, but not limited to, security systems, health care, insurance, sales/service force management, and retail.
In the example of financial institutions, banking practice requires each ATM to communicate in real time with bank computers to confirm customer identities and associated banking privileges. This communication has heretofore been facilitated by increasingly costly and/or complex methods.
Initially the communication was done through the use of hard-wired methods. Leased Lines are expensive, take a long time to deploy, are maintenance heavy, and have no provision for redundancy unless more than one line is run. ISDN lines frequently require changes to the central host system and reprogramming and retraining of staff. ISDN lines have no ability to manage and monitor the remote terminal, have low reliability, unpredictable costs, inflexible transmission speeds and lower security of data. Dial-up telephone lines also require changes to the central host system, and carry disadvantages including the inability to manage and monitor the remote terminal, low reliability, unpredictable costs, slow transmission speeds and lower security. All of these hard-wired methods require coordination with multiple regional telephone companies simply to achieve national coverage. As today""s industries grow into larger multi-regional or national entities, the hard-wired methods of connection of a remote terminal to the central host system become unmanageable and prohibitively expensive.
To reach terminals in more remote or transient locations, to more quickly deploy communications to remote terminals and to process more transactions, and to reduce the number of transactions lost due to communications failures, the communications path needs to be more reliable than ISDN, Dial-Up or Native Wireless communications. Greater reliability also allows for the implementation of an increased variety of transaction applications, as many of the new applications are more data-intense and require more reliable communications simply to succeed. Therefore, many industries including banking, turned to cellular communications, proprietary radio communications and satellite communications to deliver remote terminal communications. The ability to reach remote terminals in more remote or transient locations increased the number of terminals. Reaching terminals more quickly allowed remote users to be connected and productive sooner. Both contribute to larger transaction volumes. However, the native cellular, radio and proprietary communications technologies have associated problems.
Circuit switched cellular communications have the same problems as dial-up lines, including required changes to the central host system, inability to manage and monitor the remote terminal, lower reliability and security, unpredictable monthly costs and slow transaction speeds. In addition, circuit switched cellular communications are more expensive and less reliable than dial up due to the high pricing structure and the inherent unreliability of the cellular network. Finally, the cellular networks are regional or metropolitan based, with no single cellular network providing nationwide coverage for all types of protocols.
Proprietary radio communications share most of the problems of cellular communications. Proprietary radio offers lower monthly communication costs, but this is offset by the high start up cost associated with building the proprietary radio towers to establish communications. In addition, the ability to locate and or relocate a remote terminal site is limited by the proximity to the tower set up for communications.
Satellite communications offer nationwide coverage as opposed to the regional coverage offered by cellular or radio communications. Satellite communications typically offer network-like bandwidth. However, because satellite networks are often designed more for data transmission than for transaction processing, there are problems associated with processing transactions via satellite links. The latencies inherent in the data transmission based satellite network are frequently incompatible with the time delay tolerances set up by network transport protocols for the purpose of maintaining the integrity of the transaction. These latencies are exacerbated as the system seeks to recover lost data.
In addition to the problems listed above with various communication devices and methods, the current standard protocols (e.g. TCP/IP, X.25, 3270, SNA/SDLC (Systems Network Architecture/Synchronous Data Link Control) and others) have additional problems that exacerbate their ability to transport data securely and reliably over the wireless network. Protocols define the rules of interaction between devices attached to the network. These standard protocols are limited in their effectiveness over the wireless networks because of inadequacies in working within time constraints, inadequacies in security, inability to communicate with dissimilar protocols and network topologies, and the unavailability of single, national network supporting CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data), GSM (Global System for Mobile communication), and G3 (generation 3) wireless protocols.
While there are national wireless networks available, BellSouth Intelligent Wireless Data Networks (BSWD Mobitex) is not compatible with other standard protocols used by older host systems, thus requiring expensive and extensive upgrading of the entire host system. The national wireless networks, Hughes network, Space net and BSWD Mobitex all share the problem of latencies in the network and reliability problems in actual use. Another wireless transport protocol, UDP/IP, has the additional problem of data loss during the communication process. None of the standard devices and methods of wireless data transportation have the ability to transition between different transport protocols or across different wireless networks.
Because many remote terminal applications are driven by host computers resident on older infrastructures, the host computers use different protocols than those supported by the wireless networks. In order for a wireless communication to get to the host computer, there must be a conversion from the wireless protocol to the host protocol. Even where an application is written to work on a wireless network, differences in the protocols supported by the different wireless networks render the communication ineffective on different wireless networks. For example, many of the current networks use the TCP/IP protocol, but the BSWD Mobitex system does not accept that method and has devised a separate protocol. Thus, an application written to communicate over TCP/IP would be ineffective over a BSWD Mobitex network. This limits the applicability of wireless networking to usability over a single communication network and forces the host to accept that network""s limitations.
Previously, no combination of communication network and protocol offered easy seamless and reliable communications from remote and mobile locations. The simple definition of the path from the remote device to the host could be challenging when the two devices were attached to different networks using different protocols. There are few devices available that perform protocol conversions between communicating devices in dissimilar network environments. Of those devices that do perform protocol conversions, they all fall short of the need to connect remote communicating devices quickly because of their inability to resolve the inherent losses of data communications over the wireless network. The navigation of transaction data over the wireless networks and then over the native host networking environment is difficult and unreliable.
Therefore, to overcome the limitations of the wireless communications strategies and provide easy, seamless redundancy, what is needed is a method of operating a managed wireless network and an embedded protocol that improves the performance, reliability, and coverage area of wireless networks for the electronic commerce host and its customers.
The present invention discloses means and method for reliable real time transmission between multiple host system remote terminals and host server terminals of proprietary design. The invention uses independent modules at the host and remote terminals which overlay the proprietary host language in order to transmit secure datagrams over a multiplicity of real time wireless carriers. The invention verifies message receipt and monitors transmission link reliability in order to select the most reliable channels for message transmission. Nonperforming channels are shut down throughout the system to prevent faulty or incomplete transactions between the host and remote terminals.
The remote terminal module and host server module are essentially mirror image signal paths which, via embedded software objects, strip the transmission headers from the outbound terminal messages, and packetize, encrypt, and reformat the message package as xe2x80x9cdataxe2x80x9d within a wireless control protocol managing the data flow, control, receipt, and state management within a virtual wireless network. It will be appreciated that each time a header is stripped from the message the network segment connection is terminated. The reformatted messages are then again formatted for sending over a selected one of a plurality of known wireless carriers to which the virtual network subscribes. At the in-bound module the message is identified, unformatted, unencrypted, acknowledged as received, routed, and reformatted for suitable communication to the proprietary host system. Should the transmission fail, the failed channel is shut down by the state management system and the message is resent over the alternate wireless carrier. If the alternate message transmission fails, the host system terminals are notified and shut down. It will be appreciated that a great number of alternate transmission links may be enabled by the present invention and that the transmission systems need not necessarily be wireless.
Generally, the present invention creates three network segments in the signal path, or circuit, from the remote terminal to the server terminal of the host. A remote terminal network segment exists from the remote terminals to the remote terminal control module. A wireless network exists between the remote terminal control module and the server control module utilizing redundant wireless carrier connections. A host server network segment exists between the server control module and the host server. The network segments are intelligently linked by channel management objects in the software within each control module. Therefore, each network segment is aware of the others"" status and message transmission can be regulated and controlled throughout the circuit even though the wireless network segment is, in essence, undefined until the time of message transmission.
Further, by utilizing the wireless control format of the present invention, any wireless transmission system can be accommodated because the wireless control format overlays its own addressing layer, including a logical address, onto transmitted messages. Thus, the wireless control format can still provide the ability to service multiple logical connections through a particular network segment, whether the transmission system of that segment has provided for logical addressing or only for physical addressing. For instance, a plurality of grouped automated teller machines (ATMs) may be conveniently remotely located and communicated with utilizing only one wireless transmission apparatus running a transmission application which supports only physical addressing.
Thus, it is among the objects of the present invention to provide a wireless control protocol for a redundant wireless network link between proprietary host terminals.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a module, or modules, overlaying the proprietary host terminals and providing for communication through a secure, redundant, wireless, real time network for communications between the proprietary remote and server terminals.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide means and method for such a redundant wireless network which manages communication between the remote and server terminals according to receipt or non-receipt of message traffic between the host terminals.